Better Farm last night screened Dirt! The Movie as the first in an upcoming series of movie nights. Hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis and featuring soil experts the world over, Dirt! tells the story of the human-dirt relationship. Through the film's explanations of how dirt sustains all living things (food, shelter, water containment and filtration, climate regulation, plant growth, etc.), we also come to understand the link between human and environmental degradation and mistreatment of dirt.

Mass starvation, drought, floods, global warming, wars, and disease are all byproducts of misused or underserved soil, the movie contends. And if practices such as monoculture planting and rainforest razing continue, dirt may just find another use for us humans.

One thing's for sure: The gang here is going to be out in our garden today planting a bunch of organic produce while worshiping that organic matter making all life possible. Long live dirt!

Nicole Caldwell is a self-taught environmentalist, green-living savant and
sustainability educator with more than a decade of professional writing
experience. She is also the co-founder of Better Farm and president of
betterArts. Nicole’s work has been featured in Mother Earth News, Reader’s
Digest, Time Out New York, and many other publications. Her first book,
Better: The Everyday Art of Sustainable Living, is due out this July
through New Society Publishers.

Better Farm

Coming home to roost.

Monday mornings with Finnegan. ❤️

Queen.

Kobayashi Maru, patron saint of Better Farm, maxing in a patch of tall grass on a perfectly sunny day.

GREAT day for a ride!

So inspiring to be part of this evening’s Health and Wellness Fair at LaFargeville Central School, where students are on the cutting edge of sustainable practices with on-site vertical gardens, Brita Hydration Stations in the hallways, dual-flush toilets in the bathrooms, solar panels and wind turbines providing power, and rubber-rolled roofing reflecting sunlight off the building. And that’s just the beginning! These folks have earned their Silver LEED certification and it was a pleasure to make art and plant garlic with so many exceptional humans. 🙌🏼

Sunday brunchin’

Mighty productive Saturday morning as we raze an old shed and rescue a 19th-century stone wall from Better Farm’s original barn. Stay tuned...

Each year, we commit to adding at least 100 trees on Better Farm’s property, with 2018 marking our 800th tree going into the ground. We’re celebrating with 50 white spruces, a dozen or so fruit trees, several hardwoods, flowering beauties like peony trees and hydrangeas, and a slew of willows. The baby spruces arrived today and are taking a soak before being tucked into their new homes.

Repost from @habituallyhaley — Sunday funday hangs in the yoga trapeze at @betterfarm

Big thanks to SUNY ESF’s Society for Ecological Restoration group for helping to install this living wall in one of the bathrooms at Better Farm. Bathrooms, with all their steam and moisture, are perfect places for living wall installations featuring vines, spider plants and succulents.

Students from SUNY-ESF’s Society for Ecological Restoration have officially infiltrated Better Farm for a weekend of unwinding, team building, family meals, seed starting and a little heavy lifting.

Happy Easter!

Origami farm.

Aquaponic fish hard at work. The fish we raise in our aquaponics system are cast aways from fairs, given to us by folks who no longer want them, or are minnows left over from fishermen’s lake excursions. Every spring, we release several of the biggest fish into a pond on the property so they can enjoy a cushy retirement with tons of space and adventures. Our way of saying thanks for them helping us grow tasty greens all year long. 🐟